We appreciate Drs. Singh and Gayowski's interest in our work. We believe that considerable evidence is accumulating regarding the effect of donor and recipient CMV serologic status on mortality rates in orthotopic liver transplant recipients. By using rigorous analytical methods (including multivariate techniques to control for possible confounders), we showed an independent, clinically and statistically significant association between donor and recipient CMV serologic status and 1-year mortality rates among transplant recipients. One of the problems in interpreting results of other studies is that donor and recipient CMV serologic status may be commonly misclassified in liver transplantation because commercial assays do not have good specificity for detecting true CMV infection. Our primary method was complement fixation, which is more specific for CMV infection.